i was really big into sports, like, i love, you know, me getting a hold of a football in my hand and running was, like, you know, life. malcolm caught the football bug from corey, who was his older half-brother and best friend. we have a beautiful relationship. my mama will tell me, you know, he s crazy about you. he do everything you do. as a young teenager malcolm dealt with a father who struggled with alcohol addiction and sometimes abused him. corey was his safe haven. i had to protect him. did he kind of start to play the role of dad? i could better relate to him. i didn t fear him. and i felt kind of safe with him. feeling safe was rare in north tulsa. this was where the poorest of the poor lived. a place with very few social services but lots of crack cocaine and gang violence. the night of august 3rd,
1990, was typical. on the corner of atlanta and 4th, a gun was fired. corey says he happened to be driving through. i looked to where the shot came from. and i seen the dude fall. and as we got right there, i looks and seen his chest was still moving, he was still breathing. and i was like, man, somebody called an ambulance for him. when police arrived they found 29-year-old james lane, a small-time drug dealer, dead on the sidewalk. he d been shot once in the chest and robbed. police stopped corey at the scene. some of his friends were known gang members, and police thought cory was, too, but he had no criminal record. and they ordered us out the car and they searched my car down and they searched us down and let us go. investigators were not able to develop any leads, and the case went cold.
in a third time and pressured him again, king said he d had enough, and just wanted to leave. they wouldn t let me go. i didn t have an attorney or nothing. after being down there nine or ten hours all day, i thought well, i ve been tellin the truth. he didn t do it. so i thought, well, i ll tell them a lie and go home. king said that when prosecutor tim harris asked him to testify against corey at trial, he refused. tim harris kept trying to get me to say he did it, and i wouldn t do it. that s when they went in there and brought that tape in there and played it. and i told them that was a lie, it was lie. it was the police s words, not mine. it was coerced. to norwood, the parallels between malcolm s and corey s cases were unmistakable. these teenagers were threatened with being charged themselves if they didn t say what the detectives wanted them to say. you know, once twice is a pattern. a pattern of conduct, a pattern
of how to gain a conviction. but in corey s case it wasn t just allegations of coercion. norwood found three different eyewitnesses who told police someone else was the shooter. none of them testified at corey s trial. they all described the exact same physical appearance of someone, 5 7 -ish, 150-ish, that was an aha moment. cause corey atchison s 6 2 , he s a big dude. no one is going to misinterpret corey atchison for being 5 7, 150, okay? given all this new evidence, malcolm thought his brother finally had a chance to get out of prison. hey, bro. what s up, bro? what s up with you? every time i talk to you like when we when we was talking about you coming home, i m like, i was just on the other side, you know what i m saying? when you re locked up it s
when she finally makes that final decision, you re a free man, i feel like that s when it s there, man. hey that s mom. mama ruth. hi, how you doing? i ve been waiting for this day to come. i ve been waiting for a long time. i ve been praying for this day. family and friends assembled at the tulsa county courthouse. no cameras were allowed inside the courtroom, but i was there to hear the judge s words. she declared there had been a fundamental miscarriage of justice, and found there was clear and convincing evidence that corey atchison did not commit this crime. his daughter courtney, 28 years old, a parent herself, was overjoyed.